Mankind's Giant Leap Forward

There is only one thing that is better than being an inventor, and that is to be an inventor amongst a group of international minds, best in their fields and willing to contribute to your idea. When the spirit of the lone inventor meets the force of global collaboration, the results can reach the moon. Maybe not just the moon, as the guys at pocketspacecraft.com have proven; maybe to the edge of the solar system too.

Space is open to everyone, much like the wild west was. And just like the wild west, it's collaborative effort that's going to get us to take that first step towards, travel, exploration, understanding, and eventually, colonization. What the guys at pocletspacecraft.com have done, is developed a way to send a very light space craft, approximately three inches in diameter and less than 0.002 inches in thickness, into space. This disc contains a solar cell, an antenna and whatever that can be printed on it. Now, think about those dimensions for a minute, that's thinner than a DVD. And because it's light, it will cost less to launch it, and thousands like it, in to space.

What does the antenna do? Good question. That's what's going to be transmitting data back to earth. To whom? That's where all of us come in. pockectspacecraft.com has signed on to kickstarter.com where everyone who contributes towards this joint exploration would get one disk launched into space. That disk will report back, via its antenna, its location in space. Each of use who contribute will be able to have one each, and monitor the disk's progress. It's like the old west when we took our stake and looked for land in the unknown country.

While the idea and the prospect of owning something that travels in space and explores the solar system is a great thing - it's huge, really. There is something that's even better than that. The fact that inventions, and ideas, and concepts of the future, will probably be defined by individuals, but it may be that the implementation and refinement will be the result of collaborative forces. It might just be the wave of the future, where we open-source everything, then share it. It's the ultimate in taking it to the next level.